REPUBLIC
The picture showed an auction house and a crowd intent on gazing at a canvas on which the provocative inscription of the highly regarded street artist stood out. But it would be reductive to consider the picture as a snapshot of the world of auctioneering. It is in fact a less elitist milieu than one might think, which, although associated with England, has its origins in ancient Rome where public sales were conducted around a wooden auction.
Two thousand years later, Rome maintains the tradition, but the protagonists today are not the big fish like Christie's and Sotheby's, but small realities. Some have a long history, such as the Babuino auction house (founded four generations ago by the De Crescenzo family), Dams and Colasanti. Others, on the other hand, are newly founded, with experts coming from the antiques market sector - as in the case of Arcadia - or from Christie's, which closed its doors in 2006 after 40 years in Rome.
The outgoing experts have founded their own auction houses: Ansuini and Minerva, the latter being the most successful in Rome, with an annual turnover of 7 million euro. "These are pocket change if you look at the hundreds of millions of the big international houses," explains Fabio Massimo Bertolo, manager of Minerva, "but Rome remains an extraordinary reservoir of works, which today must be enhanced. To do this, the public must be 'educated' about auctions. "There is a tendency to look at them with circumspection," explains Andrea Ansuini, "but this is a preconception. Auctions are public, participation is free and, above all, unlike dealers, we are on the seller's side, we earn commissions of between 10 and 25 per cent of the sale price'.
Certainly surviving in a time of economic crisis is not easy. The millionaire lots such as the Modigliani nude beaten at Christie's New York in 2015 for 170 million dollars do not arrive in Rome. 'The average price for a piece is 1,500 euro,' explains Gianluca Sanzi of Arcadia, 'and 30 per cent of our turnover comes from customers abroad who connect to auctions via the internet. It is essential to innovate, even to dare'. Arcadia in the last auction in May brought street art works, which sold for 50 per cent.
But an underlying problem remains, explains Tonino De Crescenzo, director of Babuino Aste. "In Italy we are a poorly protected reality, there is no order of auctioneers, and we often have to fight with an asphyxiating bureaucracy. This leads to the paradox that 80 per cent of Italian works end up in auction houses abroad, which in fact have offices in Rome dedicated only to collecting. You find all the great Italian collectors in London!'.
These days, all the auction houses in Rome present their new collections. An opportunity to embellish your living room by spending a few hundred euros, to make an investment or simply to spend a different evening. And perhaps belie Banksy's words.
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Rome, low cost and private: the new life of auction houses
“I can’t believe you idiots are buying this shit”, read on a Banksy print at his recent exhibition at Palazzo Cipolla.The picture showed an auction house and a crowd intent on gazing at a canvas on which the provocative inscription of the highly regarded street artist stood out. But it would be reductive to consider the picture as a snapshot of the world of auctioneering. It is in fact a less elitist milieu than one might think, which, although associated with England, has its origins in ancient Rome where public sales were conducted around a wooden auction.
Two thousand years later, Rome maintains the tradition, but the protagonists today are not the big fish like Christie's and Sotheby's, but small realities. Some have a long history, such as the Babuino auction house (founded four generations ago by the De Crescenzo family), Dams and Colasanti. Others, on the other hand, are newly founded, with experts coming from the antiques market sector - as in the case of Arcadia - or from Christie's, which closed its doors in 2006 after 40 years in Rome.
The outgoing experts have founded their own auction houses: Ansuini and Minerva, the latter being the most successful in Rome, with an annual turnover of 7 million euro. "These are pocket change if you look at the hundreds of millions of the big international houses," explains Fabio Massimo Bertolo, manager of Minerva, "but Rome remains an extraordinary reservoir of works, which today must be enhanced. To do this, the public must be 'educated' about auctions. "There is a tendency to look at them with circumspection," explains Andrea Ansuini, "but this is a preconception. Auctions are public, participation is free and, above all, unlike dealers, we are on the seller's side, we earn commissions of between 10 and 25 per cent of the sale price'.
Certainly surviving in a time of economic crisis is not easy. The millionaire lots such as the Modigliani nude beaten at Christie's New York in 2015 for 170 million dollars do not arrive in Rome. 'The average price for a piece is 1,500 euro,' explains Gianluca Sanzi of Arcadia, 'and 30 per cent of our turnover comes from customers abroad who connect to auctions via the internet. It is essential to innovate, even to dare'. Arcadia in the last auction in May brought street art works, which sold for 50 per cent.
But an underlying problem remains, explains Tonino De Crescenzo, director of Babuino Aste. "In Italy we are a poorly protected reality, there is no order of auctioneers, and we often have to fight with an asphyxiating bureaucracy. This leads to the paradox that 80 per cent of Italian works end up in auction houses abroad, which in fact have offices in Rome dedicated only to collecting. You find all the great Italian collectors in London!'.
These days, all the auction houses in Rome present their new collections. An opportunity to embellish your living room by spending a few hundred euros, to make an investment or simply to spend a different evening. And perhaps belie Banksy's words.
Link